Tech

Thieves Cut Through Coffee Shop Wall to Pull Off $500,000 Apple Store Heist

They cut a tunnel to the Apple store's back room and grabbed 436 iPhones, cops say.
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Burglars pulled off an elaborate half-million dollar Apple store heist in Seattle earlier this week by tunneling through the bathroom wall of an adjoining coffee shop.

The thieves used their knowledge of the mall’s layout to break into Seattle Coffee Gear, shares a wall with the Apple store next door. The coffee store’s retail regional manager, Eric Marks, told local news outlet King 5 that they broke the locks after they closed on Sunday night, and cut a square out of the drywall in the bathroom. From there, they could crawl through to the other side and into the Apple store—without tripping any of the security systems most Apple stores have in them.

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When Apple store employees came into work the next morning, they saw that “an entire wall of iPhones (approximately 436) were gone,” according to Lynnwood Police, plus other merchandise like Apple Watches. According to police, they stole $500,000 worth of merchandise in total.

The suspects managed to cut the hole without hitting any plumbing, and entered the Apple side through its back room. Mike Atkinson, CEO of Seattle Coffee Gear, tweeted a photo of the damage, showing the square hole right next to the toilet where the thieves crawled through.

A spokesperson for Lynnwood Police told Motherboard that there are no updates as of Friday.